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Tuesday, February 2, 2016

The Apotheosis of the Written Constitution

A
troublesome thought has taken deep root in the South:that the fate of Christian civilization is
tied to the fate of written constitutions.The Southern poet Paul Hamilton Hayne spoke of it this way during the
War years:

. . .

"Our
course is righteous, and our aims are just!
Behold, we seek
Not merely to preserve for noble wives
The virtuous pride of unpolluted lives,
To shield our daughters from the servile hand,
And leave our sons their heirloom of command,
In generous perpetuity of trust;
Not only to defend those ancient laws,
Which Saxon sturdiness and Norman fire
Welded forevermore with freedom's cause,
And handed scathless down from sire to sire--
Nor yet our grand religion, and our Christ,
Unsoiled by secular hates, or sordid harms,
(Though these had sure sufficed
To urge the feeblest Sybarite to arms)--
But more than all, because embracing all,
Ensuring all, self-government, the boon
Our patriot statesmen strove to win and keep,
From prescient Pinckney and the wise Calhoun
To him, that gallant knight,
The youngest champion in the Senate hall,
Who, led and guarded by a luminous fate,
His armor, Courage, and his war-horse, Right,
Dared through the lists of eloquence to sweep
Against the proud Bois Guilbert of debate!

In
the pagan Roman Empire, the emperor was the supreme authority in both political
and religious matters (Robert Turcan, The
Gods of Ancient Rome, A. Nevill, trans., New York, Ny.: Routledge, 2001, pgs.
134-5).There was truly little to hinder
the outworking of his will.But with the
conversion of the Emperor Constantine and the Roman Empire
along with him, this changed.The
Christian Roman Emperor remained the highest political power, but his religious
power he yielded to the Orthodox Church’s bishops, though as a dutiful child of
the Church he nevertheless used his temporal power to aid her: calling
Ecumenical Councils to settle theological controversies, passing laws to
strengthen Christian morals in his realm, protecting the Church from physical
attacks, using his own personal resources to build churches, monasteries,
hospitals, and the like.

The
conversion of the Roman Empire had further effects
on how the emperor wielded his political power.Even in this sphere, he was no longer a power unto himself.He was now a steward, ruling at the behest of
Christ the King of all, to Whom he would have to give an account of his reign (Ryan
Hunter, ‘In This Great Service’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/81926.htm,
posted 9 Sept. 2015, accessed same day).Thus, he was not only subject to his own conscience in a deeper way than
before, but also to the leaders of the Church, for he also was a sheep of
Christ’s flock in need of salvation.A
story from the life of the Emperor Theodosius the Great is illustrative of this
point:

Once he [Emperor Theodosius--W.G.] was about to
enact bloody punishment of the people of Antioch
for a rebellion, but relented when St Placilla (September 14) and Patriarch
Flavian enjoined him to be merciful.

Once the people of Antioch rioted and tore down a pair of
statues of the Emperor Theodosius and his wife. Two generals came from Constantinople, planning to inflict a bloody punishment
on the people. Saint Macedonian, learning of this, came to the city and sought
out the generals, asking them to take a message to the Emperor: that he, being
human and subject to weakness like all men, should not be immoderately angry
with other men; and that he should not, in return for the destruction of
lifeless images, destroy those who are the very image of God.

This,
then, is the normative political experience of Christian peoples in both East
and West, from Spain to Ethiopia to Russia, since the time of St Constantine:A Christian king - whether the High King over
all the Christian Empire or the lesser kings who rule over the nations that are
part of the Empire - who is the highest political power in his realm, but whose
power is nonetheless limited by his love for God and for his people, by his yearning
for their salvation and for his, and by his desire also for their earthly wellbeing.Because of these new circumstances introduced
by Orthodox Christianity, many kings and queens placed the ultimate check on
their own power, renouncing their thrones willingly to become monks (e.g., St
Symeon the Myrrh Gusher of Serbia, Sts Ceolwulf of Northumbria and Sebbe of
Essex, St Balthild of France, or St Peter of Bulgaria) or to become
passion-bearers like Sts Boris and Gleb of Russia, for the sake of a better
resurrection or for the welfare of their people (and sometimes both).

And
these failing, there was the rebuke of the Church when needed, whether from
bishops, monks, fools-for-Christ’s-sake, etc.

But
in Western Europe, after the moving of the Imperial capitol to Constantinople, as
conditions began to worsen because of the waves of barbarian invaders, and with
the rise to prominence of St Augustine’s theological thought, a new order began
to develop, or, rather, a return to the old order of pagan Rome.The bishops of Rome
begat within their hearts the desire to be the sole religious and political
authority of the Roman Empire, after the
manner of the pagan Roman emperors.From
about the ninth century on (Door to
Paradise: Jesus Christ in Ancient Orthodoxy, Platina, Ca.: Saint Herman
Press, p. 12), this lust grew, until in 1054 the final break with the Holy
Orthodox Church came to pass (the Great Schism).

From
this point forward, because of its new theology based on the absent Christ and
His present vicar (i.e., the Pope of Rome), absolute divine simplicity, the
double procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, the penal
atonement theory of salvation, etc., the Roman Catholic Church (and later the
Protestant churches, for they did not repent of enough of these theological
innovations and in some cases worsened them) became a merely earthly
institution, and thus a competitor with the other earthly kingdoms of the world
for political dominion, rather than remaining the Holy, Divine-human Body of
Christ, which works to unite all the earthly creation with God so it can be filled
with His Light and life.

With
this revolution in Christianity in the West, the churches were no longer able
to sanctify and temper political power as in the days before the Great Schism,
and became instead greedy to wield it themselves, and the exercise of power by
the rulers, whether in church or state, became more and more harsh and brutal
in nature.Finally sickening of the wars
between the Roman Catholic and Protestant rulers, Papal armies, the
Inquisition, and the like, Western Europeans turned away from the disfigured
Christianity they had come to know and began devising heavily secular systems
and schemes to reign in their out-of-control rulers and to bring peace and
wellbeing to all the people.Thus was
born the Enlightenment idea of the written constitution based mostly on human
reason as the proper way to organize a government which would rule the people
justly by preventing evil actions from being carried out by those in the
government through the dispersion of powers and checks and balances among
different office-holders, branches, and departments, lists of rights, and so
forth.

The
adoration of these paper constructs has reached absurd heights in the West,
where ‘constitutional values and rights’ have become more important than the
teachings of the churches in shaping morals and in forming political policies.The humanistic, secular constitution has
become master of both state and church.

The
South, not yet seeing this reality, still considers them a guardian of Christianity,
but as we have seen (and as the news reports continue to affirm in the
involuntary American and European Unions), they are nothing less than a
replacement of the Orthodox Church’s check on the actions of the government
(and society at large) either with a demon-like clashing of factions within the
government or with the very unreliable restraint of ‘the will of the people’
(who are guided mostly by disordered passions and appetites, http://jaysanalysis.com/2016/01/20/half-jaysanalysis-republic-bk-8-the-pythagorean-city/),
both of which bear bitter fruit for the nation-family.

Dixie
was on much more solid footing when she was defending the ‘unconstitutional’
authority of her gentlemen-planters before the War, whose heavy labors of self-sacrifice
on behalf of the spiritual and temporal good of their families, servants,
slaves, and neighbors, guided by their pastors, bishops, and priests and the
Holy Scriptures, was much akin to the pattern of Orthodox Christian kings in
East and West before-mentioned.

Written
constitutions can be helpful in clarifying the powers and duties of government
officials and such like, but they are not the highest development in the art of
politics.That place probably belongs to
the Orthodox Christian king, whose powers are bound by his devotion to God, to
the Church, and to his people (who are his extended family).For the Grace of God, whether partaken of
during prayer or received through the holy oil used to anoint the king, the
Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ eaten and drunk during the Divine
Liturgy, and the other sacraments of the Orthodox Church, is stronger than even
the mightiest chain forged in the fires of the constitutional furnace to
forhold the evil designs of men.

The
South and all of Western Europe have been beguiled long enough:It is the symphony of Church and state,
bishop and king, that will bring about good government and a better future for the
nations, not the abstractions of the fallen and worldly rational mind that fill
so much of written constitutions.